Some 66,000 children abducted by Uganda's LRA rebels: report

KAMPALA, Feb 12, 2007 (Xinhua via COMTEX)
- Some 66,000 youth are thought to have been forcibly recruited into
Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in its two-decade long insurgency
in the northern region, a World Bank report has said.

According to the World Development Report
titled "Development and the next Generation", the rebels have
focused on abducting males between 13 and 18 but people of all ages and
both sexes have been taken.

The report quoted by the state-owned
New Vision on Monday warned of the severe consequences of abduction and
forced soldiering on youth.

"Two-thirds of them are severely
beaten, a fifth are forced to kill and nearly 10 percent are forced to
murder a family member or friend to bind them to the group," said
the report.

"Those who had been abducted are
more than three times as likely to have a serious physical injury or illness
that impedes their ability to work. Abductees are twice as likely to report
difficulties in family relations. They have nearly a year less education
and they are twice as likely to be illiterate," it added.

This new figure is more than double the
usual estimate. The United Nations Children's Fund has put the number of
abducted children by the LRA at 25,000.

Save the Children in a press statement
last week said 10,000 Ugandan children are still unaccounted for, while
1,500 are still believed to be held by the LRA.

The report came as the world marks the
Day against the Use of Child Soldiers.

A total of 58 countries signed the "Paris
Commitments" at a conference in France last week committing themselves
to putting an end to the unlawful recruitment and use of children in armed
conflicts.

They included 10 of the 12 nations where
an estimated 250,000 children carry arms, namely Burundi, Chad, Colombia,
Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Somalia, Sudan, Sri
Lanka and Uganda.